Salt And Light Series

Salt and Light

Thank you all for your prayers during my training at Haggai. Thank you for your love and care that you have demonstrated to Leslie and Neville while I was away. I know that many of you have personally visited her, and many of you have spoken with her regularly. Thank you. It feels good to be in the fellowship of believers who care.

I believe all of you are eager to hear about what happened there at Haggai. It was a great experience. It was great not because of the place that the training was in (The place is beautiful, and reminds one of God’s amazing creation!), but for me it was a combination of two of my passions. The training was all about Evangelism and Leadership (and focused on Servant Leadership), and as many of you know, I call myself the Leadership Evangelist in my ministry. The stated purpose of Haggai is to “advance the skills of qualified Christian leaders to more effectively evangelise their own people and to train others to do the same.” This purpose statement is very close to my heart, because of the focus on Evangelism and Servant Leadership, two subjects that I am very passionate about. The faculty is not western, but people from the third world countries with personal experience in evangelism. The participants also are from the third world countries and getting to know the challenges in evangelizing in different parts of the world in itself was a learning. The topics covered included; how to personally get ready for effective evangelism, how to understand the different faiths and world views prevalent in the world today, what models of evangelism are available to us, how to set goals for evangelism, how to take leadership for evangelism in the marketplace etc etc. I believe that there is immense value in what Haggai Institute is doing, and in faith, I have recommended many names from BBF for the future training sessions. So, in case you are contacted by them, please do consider participating, prayerfully.

I have four highlights to share with you about my personal experience at Haggai.

1. I have come back with a renewed fire to evangelise, a sense of urgency to evangelise, and with additional knowledge on methods of evangelising.

2. The Lord has confirmed my call to minister to and to train, many more leaders, through the Menorah Leadership Ministries that the Lord has entrusted me with. The call, the need and the tools to evangelise will be added as a essential part of training that I impart in future.

3. I am, more than ever before, sure that Servant leadership is the right leadership model to follow, if I have to evangelise more effectively, and also train others to do so.

4. This training has helped me to decide to continue in my job for as long as possible. As some of you know, I have toyed with the idea of quitting and getting into full time ministry at times. This was primarily driven by the need to balance between the pressures of the job, ministry and family. The easy thing to do, would have been, to give up the job, so that I have more time for ministry and (hopefully) for the family. Throughout the session the Lord continued to speak to me. John 15:16, 1Peter 2:12, John 17:18 etc gained a different meaning for me throughout the training. He continues to tell me that he has already given me a pulpit; He has placed me in this position in my company, in this particular job, all with a purpose, and His purpose. So I plan to surrender to His purpose and see how I can use the position and responsibility that He has given to me, to influence the thoughts of many in the market place.

Well that reminds me that I am supposed to deliver a sermon and not take up all the time in my testimony. I would be glad to talk about this to any one who has the time and the inclination.

It is the last point of mine that is the subject of my message today. Let me do a reality check. How many of us remember the purpose statement of BBF? It reads “We are a body of believers, making a difference, as light and salt, at the workplace, and in the community, under the Lordship of Christ.” Shall we all say it together once? It is based on Matthew 5:13-16. This morning, I wanted us to take some time looking at this purpose statement and renewing our resolve to follow that purpose statement. Keep your bibles open to Matthew 5 please. What do we really understand by being the salt and light? Most of us know what it means, but is helps in revising some time isn’t it? Let us also see if we need to prepare ourselves to be salt and light?